


You Don't Say

by yuletide_archivist



Category: The Queen's Thief - Megan Whalen Turner
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-11-01
Updated: 2008-11-01
Packaged: 2018-01-25 02:39:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,421
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1627151
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yuletide_archivist/pseuds/yuletide_archivist
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Snippets. "All I know," said Gen, "is that I don't ever want to be gods-damned immortal."</p>
            </blockquote>





	You Don't Say

**Author's Note:**

> Written for elanid

 

 

Part fill-in scene, part grand-assumptions-about-Eugenides'-cousins... whee. It's not what I planned, but it is la just in time. All faults, in all spheres, are mine - and I'm sorry for them all!

For elanid, because she's brilliant.

\--

I.

"I see you've cleaned up well."

"The same to you," Eugenides said stiffly, clinging to the politeness for others' sake - it was Eddis' day.

"Was there ever much in him to clean up?" another snapped. "How hard could it be?" My neck is unjerkable, thought Eugenides. His left shoulder shirked its careful placement a bit at a memory of slimy dirt scuttling down it, and he contented himself with a thorough glare at Racnia, whose back was turned.

"Was there ever much in him?"

"Not precisely there wasn't - "

His favorite cousin was rather surprisingly regal, as Queen. He wasn't used to it - and somewhat, he thought, as he felt soft taps of leftover spring hail nick at the velvet of his itchy outergarments, he already missed the plain face and tangled hair surrounding it, the quips much gentler than any of his other cousins. It wasn't so much that he didn't care for them as that -

"A low profession," he heard not far away: a nasty voice, and one he didn't recognize. At this, Eugenides whirled slowly. "It's a dirty job; I suppose she'll need it - Helen isn't quite cut out - "

He stopped being - the Queen's Thief, now - and became Gen again quite fully, and with all the skill of small hands that most of his cousins were green with envy over. And they looked it, Eugenides thought, rather self-satisfied, as he held Linthan down. 

"Don't bother, Gen."

"Your Majesty," he said, stuttering some in his - something resembling respect. There was an odd tingle in his spine: life changing, more quickly than he could grasp - he hated things like this. Queen's Thief, he repeated in his head, Queen's Thief. He could see her restraining a smile in the corner of his eye, but he didn't feel like sharing it. He missed Helen, not least because she was hardly ever a reason to stand straight, shoulders back, in itchy velvet and be pelted with dirty words and dirty bits of nature. Dirty profession! he spat to himself.

"Gen!" she said, reading his face. Eugenides' cheeks got hot and he knelt. "My Queen," he said, and then he swallowed - he hadn't earnt that right. Eddis didn't correct him. Nobody else noticed.

"Dirty fucking profession," he murmured, quietly, but not quietly enough. "Dirty whoring - "

"Gen!" said the Minister of War, and, "Gen!" said Eddis. It was worse, suddenly: he felt approximately as small as he was, and he had a useless sword in his belt for show, and it was all quite useless, really. "Dirty whoring bastard," he said anyway, under his breath.

II.

"I'd rather die."

Eddis nodded. "I had to offer it," she said, not moving from his bedside.

Eugenides struggled and managed to sit up, brushing off a hand in assistance from his cousin. "Really," he said, "I'd rather die than take that gods damned Gift." She nodded again. 

"I don't think I ever told you..." she began.

"Oh, shove it." The expression on his face may or may not have indicated that she could thank him later, when he was awake and conscious - and, probably, better able to tap into his sarcasm than he was now, hardly able to get up on his own and simultaneously faced with a serious conversation with his favorite cousin.

Eddis laughed. "I was going to say, I don't think I ever told you when I knew I'd be Eddis," she explained.

"You didn't." Eugenides was torn between curiosity and a deep desire to go back to sleep. He opened his mouth to tell his queen as politely as possible to let him rest first.

"Well..." said Eddis, "There was hardly anything else you didn't know. Well..." Her voice trailed off a bit and she stopped talking. "I know," she said then, "I'm still disturbing you." She laughed a little more. "I saw Eugenides, that's all. Gen - It's very strange, this - I can feel it, what you spoke about."

"All I know," said Gen, "is that I don't ever want to be gods-damned immortal. I've had enough - of more than I thought there existed to be enough _of_." He shook his head. Eddis concealed a smile at his effort toward firmness. It was _like_ Gen - she sighed.

"Enough of thieving?"

"Never. Doesn't count." He snorted, aware she knew better really, and they sat in silence for a while; Eugenides, still feverish, braced himself against the headboard. Eddis stayed there on the edge of the bed, posture neat as always. She looked different, but familiar - she was pulled tighter and brushed back more carefully, but she still even sounded like Helen. "Cou - " he started, then flushed and stopped.

"I'm offering it to you again," she said quietly. "I understand - I know you understood, and I won't ask a third time. I - " She paused. "I mean to say, it is yours for the taking."

"I've already taken it!" he whispered with as much force as he could manage. "It is...I don't wish for that. Honestly, I'd prefer to die." 

Eddis nodded a third time and said nothing, awkwardly patted Gen's elbow for a brief moment, and she left. Eugenides dreamt at first of being stuck, movement-less and soundless, in a breach between life and death, trying to scream but unable, stuck underwater and breaths coming not at all - Then he drifted into deeper sleep; he remembered no other dreams in the morning.

Later, the Queen's Thief would distinctly _not_ tell the Magus about this.

III.

"You know you're really quite astounding," said Eddis one day. 

Eugenides nodded in politeness but not agreement and stood mutely before her.

"I spoke to Racnia," he said at last.

"I assume she congratulated you on your - new status."

"Oh, she did. Indeed, I'm riding on my own, mounting on my own and everything. I could claw her eyes out possibly more easily than before, right. I must scare her," he said, only his pupils belying mirth. Then, "Her eyes never left - " 

His eyes were on his arm too, now, it was sans hook; it was late at night, and he was tired, his threshold for numbness and blistering somewhat lowered. Absentmindedly, Eugenides found himself fingering calluses on his still-extant palm and he shook his head.

"Of course not," said Eddis. "None of them really thought of you as vulnerable - "

"No," said Eugenides, nearly laughing, "it's that they thought of me as nothing else, sometimes. Oh," he said, almost cutting her off, "I know they knew I was good at what I did. It doesn't make me any less so - " He met her eyes and she managed not to look away.

"Gen," she said, and quickly apologized.

"It's all right. I'm going to see her again today," he said suddenly. "She wants to talk to me - about us all, and what they said - "

"Gen!"

"Us - " he shrugged. "I wonder who wrote the official apology for her. Ragging on a cripple - she always was somewhat more prone to guilt than her brother - I l - " he stopped abruptly. "I never want to - " he shook his head. "This family," he said finally, unusually. "And I won't be able to - " Eugenides broke off, shaking his head again, dismissively this time.

"Shake her hand?"

He didn't answer.

"You know, I never thought of you as afraid of anything." Eddis had a wistful smile on her face. It made Eugenides' throat catch, and he tilted his head a bit, puzzled at himself.

"Do you now?" She hesitated. "Go on. I'm as useless if you don't tell me as I am without fucking phalanges."

"No," said Eddis, firmly, "no, never so it'd matter." Her eyes focused upon the gold trim of Eugenides' sleeves. Her smile was kind, and queenly, and only part Helen really, and Eugenides politely stopped looking at it for a moment.

"Good," he said, his hands cold enough to tremble in his thin pockets. Always, with fancy clothes, no matter how accustomed one got. "Right in one." The shake was traveling up his arms, initiating odd tingles - he suppressed the urge to stretch within Eddis' vision.

"Gen," Eddis repeated, and shook her head in turn. "Eugenides. You - it isn't - only - she's really a piece of work - "

"You're _queen_ ," he said gently. "You can't say these things."

"Just like you can't steal a magus," Eddis said dryly.

"Just like."

 


End file.
